


if the morning light don't steal our souls

by pendules



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Confessions, First Kiss, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 02:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4648584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He hasn't lost one of their staring matches in weeks. It's like he's daring Ronan to do something about it, without knowing he never will.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Ronan's happy to lose this particular game, for the first time ever.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	if the morning light don't steal our souls

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, god, I hope I've gotten all the death list/vision-related angst out of my system (for a while at least).

Ronan parks the BMW halfway on the curb and doesn't bother locking it. It's a different kind of recklessness than the kind he felt before the dreamt will ensured that he could go home again, before he could let himself want things again. It's not only about Adam, really; it's about discovering the cave and waking the sleeping skeletons and feeling like the path they started on all those months ago is probably coming to its final destination. It's all the magic in the air between them now, the feeling that they're bigger than their skins can contain, that together they _mean_ something to the earth and to the line and to the past and to the future. It's hard to not feel invincible.

He's slept on his floor so often in the last month that knocking's starting to feel strange.

Adam lets him in and goes back to his desk.

He's studying history and Ronan wants to tell him that it doesn't matter, that history doesn't matter to people who know that time and reality can be bent and reshaped, but it's probably the longest they've ever gone without a fight. And this feels like a new kind of challenge. He doesn't want to be the one to break the tenuous peace.

It's not the only thing he doesn't want to ruin.

Ronan looks out the tiny window as the first stars start appearing in the inky blue sky. It feels like the entire town is still and silent, the only sound Adam's pen taking careful notes on the French Revolution.

A year ago it would've driven him crazy or to drinking or to racing or to wild dreaming.

He turns around to look at Adam. He's tapping his pen against his textbook now, like he's thinking about something else.

They still don't talk much, whether in dreams or not. Sometimes, he takes Ronan with him to do Cabeswater's bidding and he's quiet and intensely focused and Ronan knows he's thinking about Persephone. Ronan doesn't say anything; he just stays with him.

He's not worried; he doesn't dream about masks or about people with no faces or about people with more than one anymore, but Adam's _different_. Maybe Cabeswater wants to protect him, but he's not sure how far it'll go. How much it wants from him, how much it'll change him.

But he's stronger, more certain, more present. More tempting. He hasn't lost one of their staring matches in weeks. It's like he's daring Ronan to do something about it, without knowing he never will.

Ronan's happy to lose this particular game, for the first time ever.

Eventually, he gives up and closes his books. He goes into the bathroom and Ronan listens as the water starts running and he brushes his teeth.

He pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it somewhere while he waits for him to come out.

There's an unexpected brush of Adam's arm against his bare chest when he slips past him into the bathroom and it feels like an electric shock that radiates throughout his entire body. It's not usually awkward, because they've been sleeping in cramped quarters for a while now and accidental touches and lack of personal space are par for the course. 

Except, when he comes back, the lights are off but Adam's not lying on the bed but standing in the middle of the room facing him. He's still wearing a shirt but his pants are gone. He looks tired, ready to sleep, but there's something else in his eyes, like a startled realisation. Like he's curious about what could happen despite himself. Like he's _just_ figured it out.

"Adam," Ronan says, hushed, and it's the first word he's spoken and it's not a warning, it's an acknowledgment. It's a _yes_. It's a _Whatever you want_.

Adam steps forward and then his palm's flat against Ronan's chest, their first deliberate contact, and his eyes are trailing over the length of his body: down, down, down.

He lifts them back to his face, nods, and then he's removing his hand and leaning in and catching his lips instead, chastely and briefly, like a test. They're not touching anywhere else when he does it and the whole world is reduced to the soft push-pull of his mouth.

Adam opens his eyes and then they both move at the same time. Kissing open-mouthed, Ronan's hands in his hair and Adam's hands on his waist.

They pull apart, breathing heavily, and maybe that should be it. It should be enough for now. Ronan should pry himself out of his arms and take his spot on the floor and tomorrow they'll talk about it or not talk about it.

But then Adam's unbuttoning his pants and Ronan says, "Wait," and "Are you sure?" and Adam just looks at him, his eyes the brightest point in the room, before he gently pushes him over to the bed.

*

Ronan's putting his clothes on and Adam's just standing by the window, watching him.

"I've been thinking," Adam starts.

"No shit," Ronan says, looking up from grabbing his shirt to smirk at him.

"No, I mean, I haven't been straight with _you_." It wasn't ever a real secret; it's always been there, unacknowledged, just out of sight, but impossible to completely forget about.

"Adam," he says, stepping close to him, and his name has a new kind of weight now. "It's —" He doesn't know what he means to say. _It's okay, it's not a big deal, you didn't owe me anything._

"I didn't think it'd happen like this," Adam says quietly, eyes narrowing. "Did you think —?" It's almost like he's searching Ronan's eyes and his own brain for signs of this particular outcome to their standoff.

"I don't know," he says truthfully. "I don't think I expected anything, really."

"I should've told you — _Before_ —" He sounds like he's in a trance, almost, somewhere far away. 

"What are you talking about?" Ronan says, feeling like he's definitely missing something now, that this is about more than the two of them.

"I'm _sorry_." And he didn't expect that.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Blue told me — the night after she disappeared —"

"Just spit it out. _Please_."

"One of us _is_ on the death list," Adam says, as clear as a bell. The words seem to echo around the small room and inside Ronan's skull.

Ronan breathes out through his mouth.

"Gansey?" he asks, because he wouldn't be looking like _that_ if it was either of them. But he probably shouldn't be looking so guilty either.

Adam gives the slightest of nods. His eyes are still removed.

It should probably feel like a punch to the gut but there's some kind of sick _rightness_ about it. A part of him has always known but just didn't want to put the pieces together.

"That's — that's not all," Adam says, and it's urgent now, like he's been snapped back to the present.

"Seriously?" Right now, he's starting to wish he could go back to before all of this. To looking at the night sky and listening to Adam's familiar movements. Maybe this is a nightmare. Maybe nothing at all happened last night and he's still asleep next to his bed.

"I _saw_ it, before, I saw it in the dreaming tree. I saw him dying and I knew it was my fault, I _knew_ it, and I knew I couldn't stop it. And I knew you would never forgive me."

His eyes contain a silent plea now. When he said, _I'm sorry_ , maybe he meant to say, _I fucked up._

He wants to tell him that that could never happen, that Cabeswater lies and manipulates, that it'll show him his greatest fear just to fuck with him. But he can't. He doesn't say anything.

"You can't tell him," Adam says, suddenly desperate.

"Of course we have to tell him," Ronan says, and that suggestion is the most outrageous thing that Adam's said so far. 

Adam shakes his head, like he wants to shake all of this away. "Ronan, he won't be able to handle it."

"This isn't some bullshit plan to blackmail Greenmantle. This is about _his life_."

"What good will it do if he knows?"

"I'm not lying to him," Ronan says. They've been through too much, all of them, and they're not going to lose him. Not over a lie. Not over some stupid vision.

"I don't know if I can survive that," Adam admits.

"Why did you tell me, then?" He had to know that Ronan would never keep this a secret.

"Because otherwise, this — all of _this_ ," he says, gesturing between them, "is a lie." It seems to encompass everything: all the things Ronan's told him and shown him, the parts of himself he's trusted him with, every night they spent together here, Adam fixing the ley line because he needed it to save Matthew and his mother, the two of them sitting on the steps outside Blue's house in silence.

All three of them know now, he realises. They're all complicit, and Gansey doesn't cope well with betrayal. Mostly because he never expects it. Never expects it from _them_. Even when it keeps happening.

"Don't you get it? If we keep this from him, it already _is_."

"Okay," Adam says, breathing in deeply. "We'll tell him. But —"

"But what?"

"Are we going to tell him about _this_?" Adam can't look at him now.

"You mean — last night?"

"Yeah."

"That doesn't have anything to do with _this_." He knows how defensive it sounds. But he just wants to keep that somewhere separate where nothing dark can touch it. For a while, at least. Before they have to figure out where it fits. If there's even space for it. Ronan's always been hopeful, but in a kind of vague, hypothetical way. The way people are hopeful about winning the lottery.

"I didn't want it to happen like _this_. I promise," Adam says, uncertain, head bowed slightly.

"But you wanted it to happen?" There's still a shameful part of him that's wondering if last night was less about _him_ and more about Adam needing to feel in control of something.

"I thought that was obvious," Adam says, voice soft and intimate. He looks up at him through his eyelashes and Ronan can't help but brush some loose strands of hair off his forehead and drop a kiss there.

"It'll be fine," he tells him, not sure which part of this whole clusterfuck he means. All of it. None of it. Adam's probably not going to believe him anyway.

*

They're sitting in the BMW outside St. Agnes days later. It's after midnight and the silence is a solid thing between them now. The magic in the air seems like it's slowly being dissipated. It feels like it's been weeks, months, since that night in Monmouth, since they all stopped looking at each other.

Ronan's trying not to think about how Gansey had looked from Adam to him like it was a twofold betrayal: the lie itself, and the fact that it's the _two of them_ who's been keeping things from him, the way it never has been before. 

Ronan's not guilty about _this_. Not guilty about Adam. Adam's plenty guilty, but he's not sure he wants to know all the reasons why.

"That prick Cheng," Adam says eventually.

Ronan nods, but they both know it's not about the particular company Gansey's chosen to keep and all about what's driven him to it.

"We'll get him back," and it sounds just like _It'll be fine_ had sounded, like a stupid, useless promise that neither of them particularly believe.

" _You_ probably will," Adam says.

"We're still in this together," Ronan tells him, because he doesn't know what else to say, because he wants that to be true, even if the rest of it is all fucked to hell.

"Why? Because we fucked one time?"

He knows it's not really about him, but it still stings like a backhand to the face.

"Fuck _you_ , Adam," he says quietly, and this is when Adam's supposed to get out and walk away and Ronan's supposed to find something to punch or race but seeing Gansey's face across from him at the stoplight has burned up all of that impulse. At least for now.

Adam sighs. 

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I don't want to fuck this up." Ronan wonders if he's just saying it because he thinks he should. If that's what they are to each other now. Neither of them are the kind to say sorry when they don't mean it.

He's staring down at his lap, like he's steeling himself, the way someone who's been broken down to nothing does when they realise there's only one move left. Ronan knows that look well: the nothing-to-lose look.

Ronan remembers him saying, _And I knew you would never forgive me_. Like it was the absolute truth. Like it already happened.

"Come on, we should get some sleep," Ronan says, nudging his shoulder.

Adam doesn't argue.

Tomorrow, they'll figure out what that move is.


End file.
